BRICS not going to be counterweight to West or expand at any cost — expert
MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/. The BRICS nations, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, will take a prudent approach towards the expansion of the organization and are not seeking to be a counterweight to Western institutions, a Russian expert told TASS on Monday.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS earlier that nearly 20 countries want to join BRICS.
"The issue of possible expansion is quite topical, since many countries across the globe are attracted by BRICS, viewing it as an alternative to Western institutions. But the countries of the organization take this matter very seriously and are in no hurry or a chase after records," said Timofey Bordachev, program director of the Valdai Club.
According to the expert, BRICS is not seeking wide-scale expansion. "I don’t think that it has such a goal," he noted.
"BRICS cannot and is not seeking to be a counterweight to Western institutions," Bordachev said, adding the association was established not to oppose the West but to create a new agenda "that would reflect the interests of the majority of world nations rather than of a small group of Western states." "No one in BRICS has set themselves the task of struggling against the West," he stressed.